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Emma Crutchley. Finding the sheep and beef value-add.

Emma Crutchley, 2018 Kellogg Scholar, talks to Bryan Gibson, Farmers Weekly managing editor about some of the challenges sheep and beef farming faces in a water-short region.

Emma discusses her Kellogg research, the Value Chain Innovation Programme, and the work being done on ‘Puketoi’ to find value-add.

Listen to Emma’s podcast here or read the transcript below.

Bryan Gibson – Managing Editor of Farmer’s Weekly.

Kia Ora, you’ve joined the Ideas That Grow podcast, brought to you by Rural Leaders. In this series, we’ll be drawing on insights from innovative rural leaders to help plant ideas that grow so our regions can flourish. Ideas that Grow is presented in association with Farmers Weekly.

My name is Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly and this week, we are talking to Otago sheep and beef farmer, Emma Crutchley.

Bryan Gibson:
G’day, Emma. How’s it going?

Emma Crutchley, 2018 Kellogg Scholar, sheep, beef and arable farmer.
Good, thank you Bryan. How are you?

BG: Yeah, I’m really good. Yeah, so whereabouts in Otago are you?

EC: My husband, and I and two children live in a little inland basin called the Maniototo in Central Otago on a sheep, beef, and arable farm here called Puketoi.

BG: Sounds like a lot of work.

Maniototo sheep, beef and arable farming.

EC: Yep. So, I grew up here. My grandfather bought the farm in 1939, and we go a couple of more generations back here in the Maniototo. He’s one of the youngest sons, and he moved over from Kyeburn to Puketoi then.

I am an ’80s child, so I remember little bits of farming growing up through there. And I’m the youngest daughter out of…I’ve got an older brother. When I was younger, I had a love for animals and the farm and I could literally be found in any lamb pen, in any dog kennel, any filthy, smelly, or challenging job.

Growing up, I would be neck-deep in it. Mum and dad never really had a chance to get me out of it, and not that they ever thought that was a thing. They were very supportive of all their children, regardless of gender, being involved in the farm. I guess growing up here, I went away to boarding school and continued my love for the farm straight to Lincoln, and I never really looked anywhere else. From there, I moved on to work as a rural professional, as an agronomist, working in Christchurch for PGG Wrightson, and then later working for Pamu out of Wellington.

I knew I’d return home to the farm, but I was always a little bit hesitant because I love being around people and I love my networks and the social life side of it. I knew if I moved home, I was moving to a relatively isolated place away from a lot of the people that I really enjoyed being around.

I knew that it was the best opportunity I had and always something I really wanted to do. So I moved home in 2009, and imported a husband to the Maniototo, because it won’t come as a surprise, but being a small, rural community, everyone’s relatively related. I knew I had to find a husband before I moved home. So, yeah, he came home, and he moved here in 2010. And yeah, so we’ve worked to take over the family farm from my parents.

We’ve got just under 500 hectares of irrigation. The rainfall here is often what ‘wows’ people, it’s a 350ml rainfall. So irrigation creates the resilience we need to do what we do. We’re arable, so we grow about 100 hectares of arable crops: wheat, barley, peas, linseed, clover, rye for seed, and a few other bits-and-bobs as they come along.

We’ve got an angus stud as well. So we sell about 25 stud bulls each year. The main thing we do here, that is our main point of production, is our lambs. We have about six and a half thousand ewes. And apart from replacements, we finish all lambs born on the farm and also purchase more store lambs in January and carry them through as well to meet the demands of what we can produce and who we supply.

I do a lot in the advocacy space with Federated Farmers in Otago and also as a director for Irrigation New Zealand. My husband is very involved and he leads a lot of the rural fire stuff in this area. Being in a dry climate, it’s one of our challenges, I suppose.

BG: That sounds like a massive and diverse life you’ve got.

EC: Yeah, there’s a wee bit going on. They’ve got two kids of the mix, two, eight, and 10, so they keep us on our toes.

BG: Now, you mentioned the engagement with the Rural Leaders Programme was a Kellogg report, I think it was in 2018, that was on how to manage water efficiently and what that might mean. I guess it’s an issue that’s close to your home – and your heart. That’s why you took it on?

Kellogg research into water sharing in a water-short catchment.

EC: Well, as you know in 2017, one of the top election issues was around freshwater and how it’s managed in New Zealand. There was a lot of pressure around irrigation and the association with water quality and quantity. At that time, I was a director on our local irrigation company.

Being in this extreme climate where we are short growing season – long winters, and the value that irrigation is to our business in terms of the resilience and our adaption to climate change, I knew when I applied for the Kellogg Programme, exactly what I wanted to study in terms of a research project.

I’d been looking at it for a while, because the kids were, at the time, I think they were two and four, and at that time they’re starting to get a little bit more…I don’t know…I just went and did it!

So, my project was on water sharing in a water-short catchment, which was basically focusing in around, freshwater governance, or even crossing into environmental governance. I looked at different models from around the world and different examples of how water was managed, ownership rights, community management, and then investigated some of the policy settings we have. Also some of the solutions that might work in that space.

I think one of the learnings I got out of that was, as farmers in New Zealand we’re incredibly individualistic in how we run our businesses and that is a reflection of the challenges. The challenges we faced in the ’80s, we found ourselves then in that time of high interest rates and challenging Rogernomics type stuff. As individual farmers we had to farm our way out of it. We did that really, really well. But then that’s led us to being really innovative.

We need to understand the ‘why’ as to why the change is happening. I’m probably going a little bit off track here, but that project set the scene for me, for doing a lot of work over the last six years in the advocacy space and advocating for not only enabling farmers room to understand the ‘why’, but also those connections with stakeholders and the importance of that.

At the end of the day, the government calls the shots on policy, but the people that are voting for the government are our stakeholders, our New Zealand public, and the importance of understanding that dynamic for long-term goals rather than focusing on short-term advocacy outcomes.

BG: Yeah, I know you’ve done a lot of work. We had some stories in the newspaper this year on some of the work you’ve done to advocate for some changes to some of the water plans down your way?

Farming and the environment.

EC: I guess the thing that in Otago, we’ve worked first off the bat with land and water plans and regional policy statement, and I guess we’re also one of the most diverse regions in a Otago. For me, or for everyone really, farming systems in New Zealand are heavily intertwined with the environment. There’s always going to be public interest in farming because of our association with the environment that we farm in.

Everyone’s always looking over our fence. From that, it’s like, how do we set it up, so we enable farmers who are very good at change. So for that example, multiple challenges can be solved with one solution, and one challenge can be solved with multiple solutions. And what I mean by that is, how do you enable policy settings that enable this diverse, incredibly stunning region to actually find the scope within those policy settings to innovate around the challenge and to solve the different water quality, biodiversity, climate change challenges that we have faced.

I think advocacy is probably…I think it’s changing. We need to start learning. But it’s like communicating in a way which enables you to be understood. And my thoughts around that is we had in the Upper Taieri, one of our biggest challenges was the Upper Taieri plain and the diverse hydrology landscape that was tied up in the national wetland regulations. Then what that was the unintended consequence that that was going to create.

So, we had our big jobs for a nature project set up at that time, which involved the relationships with multiple stakeholders. I guess we always knew that if we were going to be successful in changing the settings around the wetland regulations that we needed to have a common ground with our stakeholders and what we were trying to achieve.

I know there’s a lot of narrative around, for example, the stock exclusion regulations and the huge cost they create on farmers. If you can flip that into, we need the tools in the toolbox to manage our environment, in a way that is best for the environment and best for our rural communities. We need to recognise the role that livestock can play within those systems to control our weeds and help with pest control. That was a common ground that we found.

So when we went to MFE with that case to Minister Parker, it was probably a more resonating message than just saying, ‘Oh, it’s a huge cost of fencing, and we’re going to lose all this land that we can graze’, which doesn’t resonate with everyone. They actually don’t care. They just want fresh water and they want a pristine environment. It’s explaining it in a way that actually identifies the unintended consequence of that.

So off the back of that, we managed to get that cut out of the stock exclusion rules, but it’s still a work in progress. We’ve still got to continue that conversation with our regional council as part of our water plan.

The art of making the tough conversations easier.

BG: Sounds like you’re at the forefront of a type of evolution that’s been talked quite a lot in terms of managing our natural assets – has many stakeholders who mostly want to do the same thing. It’s not an us and them farmers versus, say, fishermen or environmentalists or anything like that. And if you can in advance find those shared values, then it’s much more easy to overcome the challenge.

EC: Yeah, and I think I was talking to Julia Jones a couple of months ago and we’re brainstorming. I think she said something, and it was ‘we have a responsibility to seek to understand diverse perspectives’, then I added on the end, ‘we also need to give ourselves the personal freedom to change our minds’. I guess for me, that crosses into the fact that we are a small part of the population in New Zealand.

Like a lot of people like those in Auckland don’t really care about farming. They might want a pristine environment, but they don’t care about farmers as such. So the best way to get people to understand your perspectives is to actually listen to them and when you can create an environment which lets people feel like they’re understood – it takes away the defensiveness and the silos, and it creates more of a safe space to continue that conversation.

So when you’re really passionate, I think, and I have to be aware of this, because I’m really passionate about Ag and what we do, but passion can show up in many different ways. And when you’re passionate about a topic like farming or the environment and both, probably, most of the farmers fit into both those camps, but it’s like, how do you talk to someone and create that curiosity to let them feel like they’re heard? And then you create that connection and then that’s progress.

The Value Chain Innovation Programme and finding the value-add.

BG: Now, you’ve had a more recent Rural Leaders experience. You were on the Value Chain Innovation Programme this year. What was that all about?

EC: Yeah. So my lane, probably, in the past year has been a lot around the environmental stuff – freshwater, irrigation. But as a sheep and beef farmer, we are doing so much behind the farm gate in terms of how we farm and environmental gains on-farm. For us, because we are main point of production is lamb and finishing lambs, we’ve seen a lot of disruption within the supply chain over the past few years, especially since COVID.

Then we had another one more recently this year, where some of the guys we’ve worked really closely with over the past few years to develop our lamb supply programme. We went to them eight years ago, probably a little bit frustrated at the time, we wanted to supply a product that worked with our lamb, our supply chain, and what was actually needed within that, so we could add more value.

So they came back to us. We said to them, ‘how can we better support what you’re trying to do so we can add value to what we’re trying to do?’ They came back and they said, we need to know when your lambs are coming three to four months ahead. We need all year-round supply, and we need to have a consistent hook weight. And we went ‘righto’ and took that away. Then over the next few years, we worked really hard to actually schedule three to four months out and supply 11 to 12 months of the year and build a system around that, but then also target those specific hook rates and get it right. So, it worked really well.

Then when we had a bit of disruption within our meat company, probably three or four months ago, it blew a bit of that away. It blew away those trusted relationships, and it’s a bit of an ‘aha’ moment for me, and I realised how vulnerable we are to what happens in that supply chain and what we do. Because when your main part of your business is producing lambs and something happens in the supply chain, that’s a big issue.

I’d looked at the Value Chain Innovation Programme last year and I thought it was probably not really in my lane. And then I was like, well, actually, it really is in my lane, because if we’re doing all this other environmental stuff and trying to add value on-farm, we need a supply chain that actually supports what we’re trying to do.

So we, as farmers with our increasing costs, our sheep and beef farmers, especially the catchment limits that you’re trying to farm within, you can’t just produce your way out of it anymore. So, the real important thing that I’m seeing is, how can we value-add?

I applied for the Value Chain Innovation Programme with Hamish (Gow) and Phil (Morrison) to look at all the different value chain examples through the North Island. We got on a bus in Auckland and went down to Hamilton, explored the Fonterra markets with the Fonterra value chain around there, going to a dairy farm and then into the Fonterra factory, and also looking at LIC and DairyNZ and how those operations also support the dairy industry.

Then we investigated kiwifruit, and we also went to Robotics Plus in Tauranga. That was pretty amazing, seeing some of the tech that and the robots that they can pull in to support different production systems.

From there, we went down to Taupo and went to Pamu, and also sheep and beef there. I’m probably missing one, but over to Hawkes Bay to look at the apples as well, and also First Light Foods and a couple of others in there, just investigating what all these systems are trying to target. From there, I figured out that we are…yeah, I feel like we are lacking a little bit in leadership to support innovating the value chain to create value for what we do.

A lot of us are also limited in the land use change that we can actually do to add value. So it’s really important to me to start thinking about how we do add value through the supply chain.

BG: It seems to be like the Holy Grail. A lot of the feedback I get at the newspaper about various regulations and environmental and sustainable goals, people just go, well, we were promised it was value-add, and we’re not seeing it. We’re still slave to the schedule, that sort of thing. And so that’s a real hard nut to crack.

EC: And it’s never going to be easy. People will probably listen and say, she’s crazy. You can’t do that. But what options do we actually have in some cases? It’s like saying, well, okay, it’s hard, but what else are we going to do? Because in New Zealand, we’re actually not… I don’t know, we’re passionate about what we do, we have an amazing industry in sheep and beef.

I guess the other thing is we’ve also…when I think about, I’m very much Ag right through my life. Everything that I see as sheep and beef farmer supports what I can do behind the farm gate and creating efficiencies within the farm gate. There’s not a lot that actually looks at how we create value through the supply chain.

So I think that was probably a bit of an ‘aha’ for me throughout the (Value Chain Programme) trip, is actually realising that, yeah, we are actually stuck. There’s been amazing work done, but it’s like, how do we realise that, yes, a lot of what we do, even with our industry bodies, is focused on production, and behind the farm gate, but there’s not a lot on added value.

BG: Well, the cool thing is, I guess, that the product is amazing already, so it’s a good launching pad.

EC: Yeah, 100 %

BG: It sounds like your experience with Rural Leaders has been pretty rewarding. Is that something you’d recommend to others.

EC: Yeah, absolutely. I don’t know where we would be in New Zealand’s primary sector without Rural Leaders – there’s some great options of different programmes you can get involved with, and there’s always stuff to learn. I think even if I went back and did either of those courses again, you’d still pick up something new.

The people you meet along the way as well and I guess the networks. And I guess when I’m thinking about something and I know I don’t know the answer from those networks, I have a fairly good idea that I will know someone that will. And if they don’t, they’ll know someone that will. It’s a small, small place, the New Zealand primary sector, and there’s a lot of power and networks as well.

BG: Thanks for listening to Ideas that Grow, a Rural Leaders podcast in partnership with Massey and Lincoln Universities, AGMARDT, and FoodHQ. This podcast was presented by Farmers Weekly.

For more information on Rural Leaders, the Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholarships, the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme, or the Value Chain Innovation Programme, please visit ruralleaders.co.nz

The Rural Reader book review.

Landscapes and geomorphology – A very short introduction. Andrew Goudie and Heather Viles (2010)

You may be wondering why I have included a book like this in my reading list. It is relevant for the food and fibre sector at a time of more intense storms and the damage they do to farm infrastructure. Another reason is that this is a sample of an excellent series of physically small (easy to carry in a coat pocket or small bag), concise but useful and readable books, on all sorts of topics of wider interest.

The series (shown below), written by specialist experts, produced by the Oxford University Press, and known as “Very Short Introductions”, comprises about 740 titles at present. They are reasonably priced at around $20 -$25 depending on the retailer.

The books, and related blogs, are particularly useful if you are doing personal research or are part of a catchment group or some other specialist organisation and need a reliable well-written semi-technical resource to help you become more familiar with a topic. Some are now targeted at secondary school students. Most are 150 -180 pages long and, in my opinion, are superior to many online popular “quickfire” sources.

Patrick Aldwell
October, 2023

Julia Galwey. By-product to buy product – Pearl Veal NZ.

An innovation story that covers the journey from an idea to the challenges of development, and to implementation. Julia Galwey, 2020 Kellogg Scholar, talks about Pearl Veal NZ, a new sustainable utilisation of the bobby calf resource.

Pearl Veal NZ was the winner of the Silver Fern Farms Market Leader Award at the 2023 Beef+LambNZ Awards in mid October.

Listen to Julia’s podcast here or read the transcript below.

Bryan Gibson – Managing Editor of Farmer’s Weekly.

My name is Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly and this week I am talking to the recent winner of the Market Leader Award at the Beef and Lamb New Zealand Awards, Julia Galwey.

Bryan Gibson:
G’day Julia, how’s it going?

Julia Galwey, 2020 Kellogg Scholar and Co-Founder Pearl Veal:
Good, thank you Bryan. How are you?

BG: Pretty good, where are you calling from today?

JG: I am calling from my home office in Christchurch.

BG: Nice. Have you been getting all the wind we’ve been getting up here?

JG: Yeah, it’s been pretty mixed bag at the moment. Very much spring weather.

Winning at the Beef+LambNZ Awards.

BG: Yeah. Now, it was a pretty big time for you, the Beef and LambNZ Awards.

JG: Yeah, it was pretty neat for Pearl Veal to be recognised at such a wonderful event. Just have an evening of celebrating lots of positive things happening in the industry with the various finalists and category winners. A big thank you to Beef and LambNZ for hosting the event, and also to Silver Fern Farms for sponsoring the market leader category.

BG: Yeah. Now, can you just tell us a bit about your background in the food and fibre sector?

Background - Julia Galwey, 2020 Kellogg Scholar.

JG: Sure. I grew up on a sheep and beef and deer farm near Fairlie in South Canterbury. Then I headed off to Lincoln to do an Ag Science degree. Following that, I had six years in the agribusiness team for ANZCO Foods based in Ashburton, which was a neat team to be involved in, and a really varied role, that got me going in the meat industry.

Then in 2018, Alan McDermott and myself, we set up Agri-Food Strategy, which is our own agribusiness consultancy company. It focuses on working with farmers and agribusinesses to address strategic challenges and opportunities. I guess, again, it’s been pretty varied in terms of the work I’ve been involved with in that space.

BG: Now, you took on a Kellogg Scholarship in 2020, which, of course, was the year of the lockdown, if I remember correctly. You chose to do it on a value chain for veal. What made you think of that subject?

Kellogg research into the potential of the bobby calf resource.

JG: Good question. Yeah, I guess the idea to look at this for my report was just being around the meat industry and the bobby calf topic continues to come up in conversations. There just wasn’t really a lot of information that I could see here in New Zealand in terms of looking at older veal animals as an option for this resource, a by-product of the dairy industry. I didn’t really want to focus on the discussion or debate around the bobby calves themselves. I did for some context in my report, but I just wanted to focus on looking at one potential solution or opportunity for utilising some of that resource.

BG: Then, of course, it’s one thing to write a report about this stuff, but you carried that on and started a business. How did that get off the ground?

JG: I guess while I was doing my research report, there’s a few things that came up in terms of some learnings and drivers or motivators. One of them was probably around learning how much of a bigger risk the bobby calf thing was here in New Zealand. Especially compared to other countries in terms of the scale, with our couple of million versus Australia would be the next biggest, at around 400,000.

The report highlighted we were out there on our own in terms of how big of an issue it might be going forward. Some of that, was a bit of a driver. I learned a bit around the varying types of veal markets that there were internationally and saw some opportunity, but I really struggled to find any information on pasture-fed veal systems.

So, it became obvious that maybe there was an opportunity for New Zealand to diversify in terms of our offering in the veal space with what we’ve got here. Also, in terms of some of those credence attributes – pasture-fed, free-range, rather than copying some of the international veal systems.

From research to innovation.

As I was doing the report, Alan McDermott, who’s my business partner, was keen to have a go. We could test out what opportunity there really might be. I mean, it’s all very well, like you say, writing a report, but you just must have a go to see whether something might work or not. Halfway through my project, that’s what we started doing.

We had a quick brainstorm for a name so we could get a company set up. There are quite a few negative connotations around the name ‘veal’, which I learned a bit about while I was doing my report, in terms of some of the historic practices that used to happen in terms of how veal was raised internationally.

There was, I guess, some questions around whether we should even call it veal or not. But we talked to a few chefs, and they pointed out that we need to call it what it is. That’s what they know it is. A lot of them have trained internationally and used it before, so just stick with what it is, but make sure you build a story you can underpin your brand with. We sourced some under 12 months of age, a whole 12 of them, and found a processor that was happy to process them for us.

We set up cut specs and went along to the plant to see how it would go and then started sending some products to chefs to see what they thought. We had a development chef that we were introduced to through a contact, and he kindly took us around Wellington for a couple of days. He introduced us to a few chefs and helped us learn how that world works in terms of getting into restaurants and talking to chefs – and how to get on their menus.

Building scale.

The feedback on the product was great. We started working with the team at Synlait, including one of my fellow Kellogg cohort members, which was quite cool. They’ve been supportive in what we were trying to do and helped us connect with some of their dairy farm suppliers who were keen to give it a go and rear some calves. It’s been a nice fit for us to work with the Synlait team and some of their suppliers.

BG: How difficult is that process? You’ve got a prototype product and you’ve started with a small number of animals to begin with, then you’ve got to scale that up to something that’s a viable business. What’s the process there?

JG: It’s one of the trickier things to balance. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg in terms of you’re not quite sure in terms of what market you’ve got, but you need to get enough product that you’ve got enough to supply to a restaurant to put it on their menu. Yeah, it is a difficult balance, and some of that is just to take a risk. I guess for us, one of the things that we were quite focused on was building around the story and attributes we wanted to go around our brand. With some of that starting with animal welfare for us in producing the best calf possible.

The rearing regime and how it works.

There’s quite a lot of challenge in terms of veal as anything must be produced before the calf is 12-months old, so a lot of the challenge is around getting it to grow as fast as possible and to reach a heavy weight in that time. It needs a good start in life as a calf, to be able to do that. Some of our system was built around a particular rearing regime in terms of good colostrum.

Then we only use whole fresh milk rather than milk powder, which has had a lot of the good bits taken out of it. Milk is what’s designed for the calf, so let’s just give it that and obviously some pasture as well. But because of that rearing regime, we can’t just go out and get any calf on the market.

It starts right from the start in terms of what we’ve built to underpin our brand. That also is a little bit harder in terms of, like you say, we’re planning what we need over a year in advance, and you don’t necessarily know what your market is then. A bit of risk, I guess, and just a balance of starting smallish so that you learn the risks, learn the things you need to iron out as you go.

BG: Getting back to your rearing regime, that must mean you need to work pretty closely with the farmers who are actually doing this stuff?

Collaborating for success.

JG: Definitely. I think the other thing in that space is the Synlait farms that we’re working with are all certified ‘Lead with Pride’, which again, helps underpin animal welfare and the colostrum management. Obviously, our contracts have got the rearing regime outlined in them, and we talk them through what that looks like and why. We also don’t have meal as part of our rearing regime. Part of that is around wanting to remain grain-free, so 100% pasture-fed and antibiotic-free, so that we can look at going into the US market in time.

Again, it’s the whole fresh milk, no meal. It is a bit of a change to how calves are traditionally reared here. We’ve got to work closely with the farmers on what that looks like. We’re thankful for those first few farms that were willing to take a bit of a risk and rear and finish calves for us.

We were a couple of random people saying, here, we want to contract you to rear these calves in a particular way and finish them through to an age and weight that’s not traditional here. They had to trust a bit that we would take them when we said we would and have a processor to process them and pay them.

I guess that’s probably also part of what’s been quite helpful working within the Synlait team. That helped farmers have a go. There’s just some great farmers out there that are keen to try something different and learn with us, which has been nice.

BG: Yeah. Now, who are you selling to now? What are your export markets, or locally?

JG: Currently, we are pretty much mostly domestic market into high-end restaurants. We’ve just started doing a little bit into some smaller retailers here, and we’ve just started a little bit of export.

BG: Now, obviously, the bobby calf issue is one that New Zealand’s farming industry is grappling with. Do you see this type of initiative as part of a solution?

A new veal value chain.

JG: Yeah, I mean, the bobby calf issue is obviously a big social license to operate topic in the dairy industry, and it’s a pretty tricky thing to navigate with the views of community here and also our customers and consumers globally.

I guess we just have to keep asking ourselves if we’ve got practices that we’re comfortable and being transparent about, and if not, then what are our opportunities and solutions to do something differently? I guess that’s really what we’re trying to do with Pearl Veal is.

I don’t like to focus too much on the bobby calf aspect of it. But more the opportunity that exists to take some of that resource and add value to produce a really quality veal-based product with a story and a brand that’s underpinned by animal welfare standards and a pasture-based system that we believe in. We’re proud to share with chefs and customers and consumers here.

BG: Of course, back to where this all started, the Kellogg Programme – how did you find it? Is it something you’d recommend to others who were thinking about doing it?

The Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme - where it started.

JG: Yeah, absolutely. It was such a good course and I guess a real opportunity to network too. We had such a great cohort of people. It was a good cross-sector group of people. You get to meet people that you wouldn’t normally be working with and the people and the speakers that come in are incredible. It really broadens your thinking and opens your networks and I would highly recommend it to anyone considering it.

That’s why I did it. It’s something that once people have done it, they’re always recommending to anyone that hasn’t. If you get that opportunity, jump at it. I think it’s one of those things that probably never feels like the right time when you’re in your working career because you’re always busy or home life as well. You just have to jump in and do it.

BG: Thanks for listening to Ideas that Grow, a Rural Leaders podcast in partnership with Massey and Lincoln Universities, AGMARDT and FoodHQ. This podcast was presented by Farmers Weekly.

For more information on Rural Leaders, the Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholarships, the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme, or the Value Chain Innovation Programme, please visit ruralleaders.co.nz

Kate Scott: Front footing the fast-moving regulatory environment.

Hamish Murray podcast - Building stronger on-farm teams

Hamish Murray: Building stronger on-farm teams by getting out of the way.

Just over two weeks ago a group of people from across New Zealand came together in Auckland for a week of visits to operations within four key value chains – Dairy, Red Meat, Apple and Kiwifruit.

Any one of the twenty-two Value Chain Innovation Programme visits seen in isolation, would generate plenty of ‘aha moments’. To run four value chains in their entirety was quite something else. It’s what makes this programme work so remarkably well.

The level of access to the leaders, founders, operators met on the Programme created the feeling you were often being ‘let in’ on some extraordinary insights. This made possible by the understanding that Chatham House Rules apply.

In this article we share ‘field notes’ from the perspective of the people who were there.

Jesamine Wanoa, also wrote a post a day while on the Programme and offers her unique perspective as a specialist grower of native NZ plants and owner-operator of Tangikaroro Native Nursery.

Rachel Baker, was one of the four 2024 Nuffield Scholars on the Programme. We share her post-programme post. Rachel is a Farmer and Portfolio Manager of MyFarm Investments’ Hawke’s Bay apple syndicates.

12.11.23
Day 1 – Jesamine Wanoa:

Good first day, departing at 1pm from Auckland Airport to Hamilton.

Instantly connected with two Ngāi Tahu women, and enjoyed deepening my understanding of the three disciplines of value chain models, and seeing the potential for where Ngāti Porou might adapt a model to suit our purposes. A good overall general structural framework for navigating this journey with.

Thank you Hamish and Phil for both leading and Co-facilitating, and Matt and all my colleagues on this journey with me. What a talented bunch!

I’m so excited to finally be here growing our network and understanding together. Thank you my whanau back in Te Araroa and in Tuwakamana for this opportunity.

13.11.23
Day 2 – Jesamine:

Visited Te Rapa Farm (Fonterra Farm Source) and witnessed milk testing technology at Fonterra today, as well as cheese and dry milk powder production. Then visited the cold store facility prior to export. Every truck bringing in product must meet a standard of cleanliness! Amazing 40 ton forklifts that lift 28 ton crates.

Additional field notes:
First stop was a Fonterra Farm Source working dairy unit, where new on-farm technologies and innovation are trialled for wider rollout.

We explored MilkTestNZ, where milk samples from 10,000 dairy farms are tested every day in a remarkable feat of logistics and efficiency.

Then we moved to Fonterra’s impressive distribution centre, to LIC and DairyNZ where senior leaders spoke with us directly. And the NZ cream on top – a visit to Zenders Cafe, run by three sisters who grew up on a Dutch dairy farm.

14.11.23
Day 3 – Jesamine:

I was very impressed with our host Hayden’s approach. Hayden works with Robotics Plus. The ability of Robotics Plus to recognise where their strengths lie in solving problems, helps them then play between the flags of those strengths, to produce customer-focused solutions.

Their model allows for collaboration with other partners, who hold expertise in other areas of the value chain outside these flags, to create a solution fit for purpose to meet the client’s needs. Ka mau te wehi!

My take-away from this visit, is that it’s critical to customer trust and confidence to be transparent about what you’re skilled in, and then decide what components for the solution should be out-sourced to business partners who are better positioned to meet those requirements.

This collaborative approach towards knowledge sharing to solve the customer’s problem, allows business partners to use their unique skillsets to support you and your customer’s business, and vice-versa.

This model is so efficient and utilises a strong collaborative network approach that puts the customer at the centre – and is future focused. Everyone on the workshop floor understands that culture from apprentice to Manager. Everyone has genuinely taken ownership of their part in the value chain, creating an incredibly innovative and creative work environment that’s a safe space for developing their talent.

After Robotics Plus, the Ports of Tauranga. The volume and variety of export that goes through this space is mind boggling! It requires every individual on-site to be committed to best practice in terms of biosecurity and health and safety.

There are layer upon layer of control measures needed, not just to keep you safe on this extremely busy port, but to keep you alive! We saw here the forestry logs, and the automated Robotic Plus technology used, to measure each log’s length, diameter and therefore weight.

The next visit was at Zespri, who have shifted over time from being supported by government entities, to now leading and supporting our government on the international stage. Such is the success of their approach, which is thorough but future focused, with the consumer always front of mind.

Also invited to speak were KVH (Kiwifruit Vine Health), who focus on NZ’s biosecurity response. KVH anticipates future threats before they hit NZ, to mitigate and minimise their impact. Again, another visionary entity, who like Zespri and NZKGI (NZ Kiwifruit Grower’s Incorporated), were willing to share material in their presentations today, and made the process of choosing the kind of model that would be a good fit for Te Tairāwhiti easy.

I express my sincere gratitude to all the above businesses for their kindness in opening themselves up to our questions, and for their generosity in sharing their answers. I have found today absolutely invaluable. Kei te mihi tino nui ki a koutou.

Additional field notes:
Port of Tauranga Ltd, the largest of NZ’s 13 ports. An impressive operation to see firsthand – 80% of NZ kiwifruit exports, 70% meat exports, and a total of 24.7 million tonnes moved through the Port last year.

Next stop, hearing from senior leaders at Zespri, KVH and NZKGI in Mt Maunganui – a collaborative model combining single point of entry via Zespri, strong advocacy via NZKGI and world-class biosecurity from KVH.

15.11.23
Day 4 – Jesamine:

We started the day with Plant and food research, who perform a critical service in protecting our horticultural industries like Zespri. They have a pioneer research team working on taonga foods. I’ll share about this at a future date. So exciting!

We then left for Trevelyan, who are a legacy NZ company that’s been around for eons. Time critical performance schedules for grading, sorting and packing, to get produce exported to their international market.

Then we had the pleasure of a walk through an A Class nursery, Southern Cross Horticulture. An awesome set up that’s got so much to offer in specialist knowledge for growing Kiwifruit.

Additional field notes:
Day four, continued the kiwifruit value chain. First stop – the Kiwifruit Breeding Centre, a collaboration between Plant and Food Research and Zespri. KBC finds out what growers need in a cultivar and then deliver through accelerated research.

Then onto the Te Puke based Trevelyan’s, an independent, family-run, single-site kiwifruit and avocado packhouse – and NZ’s largest. It has a 50+ year history and has family values woven through all facets of the operation.

Southern Cross Horticulture – orchard developers, cropping and orchard management. We saw a perfectly constructed system, consistently delivering the perfect plant.

Finally to Pāmu’s Wairakei Estate to complete the dairy value chain. We heard from senior leadership on Pāmu’s dairy beef, organic dairy, winter milking, A2 and deer milk, and pastoral business mix, as well as an extensive sustainability strategy on all 112 Pamu farms.

16.11.23
Day 5 – Jesamine:

Today I broke my ‘beer drinker virginity’ with a tall glass of Gizzy Gold! Thank you Gerard and Jason from First Light for treating the local pub as your classroom 😀. By embracing a real world approach, (the course) allows us as participants to get up close and personal with export industry leaders, in their mix and mingle comfort zones, which in NZ is the local pub.

However, before we got to the pub, we visited Lochinver, a huge farm with huge stock numbers. The value chain here is commodity based, which is very different from that of First Light.

Aside from livestock, I can see huge potential in the land itself here, and the still untapped natural resources of native plant seed harvesting and propagation, and gourmet food developed from wild Canadian Geese. The geese are a pest here, that could add economic value as meat. However, that would require a shift in mindset which may not suit their current customer focus.

So what I learned from First Light is that different value chains will have a different focus depending on who they identify as their customers, which can be at different ratios for customer groups, with strategies to cater to each of those customer groups.

Additional field notes:
“We’re driven by growth, but by growth in value.” Jason, First Light Foods.

Jesamine:
Being able to forecast how the dynamics in the make-up of that customer group will change over time is key to longevity. Looking after every step of your product’s journey from farm gate (nursery) to the customer, while never losing your “story” and point of difference, is also a skillset NZ is leading in, but can always improve on.

Additional field notes:
“I’d rather stab myself in the stomach than lose a point of difference.” Jason, First Light Foods.

Jesamine:
The journey from Lochniver to Napier took our team through Eskdale Valley, where a colleague walked us through the disaster as she experienced it. What we saw, the impact on the land, the homes and the lives of locals was incredibly sobering. To say that the people here are resilient is an understatement.

Upon reaching Napier, prior to meeting the owner operators of First Light, we had the privilege of meeting Gourmet Direct, who BBQ cooked delicious samples of Rose Veal for us, and believe me, it’s to die for! It’s the one thing that both Gourmet Direct and Zespri got right. They both show-cased their product for us to taste test. That’s a mark of confidence that’s earned each of them a 10/10 in my book.

I loved Kate and Perry’s “who and why” story for their value chain. The success of it will be significantly influenced by how well that story is communicated both locally and internationally. (I shared an idea. I hope they use it).

Additional field notes:
Lochinver Station kicked off day five on the Value Chain Innovation Programme. 13,000ha’s of mostly sheep and beef finishing.

Next stop was one of New Zealand’s first direct to consumer online perishables retailers, Gourmet Direct. Owned line, Rose Veal, sees animals raised in pasture to 8 Months. No hormones, antibiotics or palm kernel are fed.

First Light Foods’ founders hosted an inspiring discussion at Havelock North’s Giant Brewery. First Light continues to show how to produce the highest quality grass-fed wagyu and farm-raised venison.

17.11.23
Day 6 – Jesamine.

Today we visited Turners & Growers, Rockit and Mr. Apple. So in a nutshell, apples were the food of choice for the day. We also were introduced to a newly created beer, one of my course colleagues produced. I’ll wait until he launches it first though, before I mention the name. My Dad would absolutely love it.

We saw the differences in the value chain models employed by each of NZ’s top apple growing companies. We also touched on the impact of Climate-change, Covid, Delta, War, Government, and building human capacity, and how that looks for each group.

I met people today, who are not just international superstars in the horticultural and agricultural space, I also witnessed trail blazers passing on the torch to a group of passionate, driven and motivated visionaries – my colleagues. It’s humbling to meet local NZ giants, who understand the international market place so well, they can put you at ease, while describing their story in a way that makes it easy to digest.

There were times I could enjoy bite-size pieces, and there were times I knew I just had to live in the moment and absorb whatever I could. The thing I felt grateful for, was that the way they told their story allowed me to feel I was sharing in it. The quality and callibre of leadership in the room amongst my colleagues, meant that I was learning from the questions they asked and the answers we all received as a result.

I hope they in turn, were able to take away something from the answers to my questions. I’m really proud of all our NZ apple exporters. Thank you for your commitment to lifting our country’s economic future up to where it needs to be on the world stage. Tautoko!

My last point, is that the style of teaching in this course, requires you to have an appetite for the market place, regardless of what your focus is in your given industry. You can’t wait to be spoon fed. You have to be proactive, to stretch yourself – at times painfully – outside your comfort zone. That in itself, is a very important characteristic in the market place, which changes shape often. Adapt or die is a loud enough message here.

Fortune favours future-focused visionaries, who appreciate the value of our own authentic story, to share in a new way on the world stage for everyone to enjoy. It’s our point of difference, that makes us the premium product, and therefore the premium price point.

Additional field notes:
Day six, T&G Innovation Orchard. This vertically integrated continuous improvement model covers research, growing, sales and marketing.

Next was Rockit Global, where we spoke with one of New Zealand’s most experienced, accomplished, and humble sector leaders.

Rockit was a clever apple waiting for an idea to fall on it. And, the idea that landed turned out to be rather big; apples in a tube, sold at service stations – and a huge export earner too. It’s a story that “…neatly blends FMCG requirements with fruit realities.”

The final visit Mr Apple, export 25% of the New Zealand’s apple crop around the world and follow a philosophy of “…discipline not control…”

To end the day, programme participant Carlos Bagrie kindly shared the first pull of his fantastic new beer in the hi-tech brewery it was made in.

18.11.23
Day 7 – Jesamine.

The opportunity to see Craigmore Orchards today, was an experience that will stay with me for a long time. Simply because of the sheer size and scale of the operation. There are literally tons of apples taken from here to international markets, with most being IP branded to specific companies.

The fascinating thing about the apple industry, is the collaboration between growers supplying the market. Growers are both transparent and supportive of one another. Working together lifts the standard on both the domestic and international front, because best practice outcomes add value to the market’s perception of NZ apples as a “trusted source”. This perception of us as a trusted source, is what allows us to trade our NZ apples (in competition with other international growers like Chile 🇨🇱, USA 🇺🇸, etc.) at a premium price.

Our country’s leadership in the apple industry, regard people as a valuable asset to be invested in, developed, and up-skilled. The apple capital of NZ is Hawkes Bay, where staff retention can be a challenge. So this approach is pivotal to this industry’s survival and success. There are good success stories with migrant workers, which has benefitted our local retail in Hawkes Bay, and the families of these workers in the Pacific.

Out of all the apple brands out there, Rockit, Mr Apple and Turners & Growers lead in this space. Thank you everyone for your enormous generosity towards our group, who will one day be your future industry leaders.

Additional field notes:
The last day of the Programme – Craigmore Orchard, producing 2500 tonnes a year. The Orchard’s leader has a passion for people, “…along with locking up great IP … good social practices will be something that differentiates NZ Horticulture.”

The day ended with Lisa Rogers, Rural Leader’s CEO, and facilitators Hamish Gow and Phil Morrison chairing participant preso’s before a final dinner together.

A truly inspiring and informative value chain experience, where sharp ideas, insights, new connections and friendships have been made.

Good things.

Summary – Jesamine.

The Rural Leaders Value Chain Innovation Programme: If there is one word that springs to mind to describe this course, it would be “access”. Access to a wider vision for understanding the same landscape. Access to business models that can shift you from a business transaction to a business relationship with other entities. Access to incredible industry giants who I believe genuinely care about “our country”.

The second word is “relationships”. The wealth of “industry know how” across the horticultural and agricultural sectors became available to other course participants and I, because of the relationship “Rural Leaders” has with industry gurus in their field of expertise.

So then after having found access to these relationships, the question is now, “Where to from here?”

My experiences have re-shaped my vision. I arrived in this space believing I would discover a value model that I could take home, adapt and bend into a Maori framework to create a “Maori Rural Leaders Value Chain Programme” for Ngati Porou. What I realised by day 1, is that this approach would rob my own people of the huge value that is found in the interactions between Pakeha, Maori and Tauiwi course participants in this space.

The learning in these interactions is just as valuable as the knowledge gleaned from sitting face to face at the table with industry experts, and the mentoring by course leaders.

Although my Koro, Ben Wanoa was a farmer, as was his father Rev. Matauru Wanoa, I myself had no experience of farming other than to feed Papa’s chooks as an 8 year old from the wool-shed platform. Listening to the calibre of questions issued by my Pakeha colleagues working in dairy and beef, to CEOs, Chairpersons, Managers and the like, gave me a greater appreciation of their huge concern for the horticultural and agricultural industries in Aotearoa-NZ.

There were also Ngai Tahu women leaders present as course participants, whose skill and expertise were wonderful to witness. I believe my own questions and answers had some impact, even if I hadn’t intended to challenge the CEO of Rural Leaders.

When I was asked, “What do you think is the biggest impediment to Maori accessing this course?” I plainly answered, “Money. I have heard my Pakeha colleagues share about the very real hardships they have faced with Covid, weather events, government and industry bodies. If they’re operating at 60% with all they have access to, then my people who have no access, are operating at 40% or less.

We can’t say NZ’s the best in the world if we’re operating at 40/60. We’re only the best when we’re all operating at 100% in total. To get there we can’t operate as ‘them’ and ‘us’ on the world stage. There has to be just ‘us’ if we’re going to compete as a country against international competitors. The 100% lift we’re looking for with resource allocation, must be right across the sector to get prime product status for all of NZ. Rural Leaders are acting on this.

Rachel Baker – via LinkedIn.

Last week I toured the North Island exploring NZ food sectors on the Value Chain Innovation Programme delivered by Rural Leaders and facilitated by Hamish Gow from Lincoln University.

This is a truly outstanding programme. Learning as a group from each other, while being connected with the leaders, innovators and rockstars of businesses in dairy, red meat, kiwifruit, apple and logistics, and doing a deep dive into each.

It continually struck me over the week that as a food producing nation, we trade on trust. Trust in relationships (many buyers were customers of 20+ years), the quality of product (rigorous grade standards, consistency), how it is produced (sustainability, transparency) and who produces it (farmers and growers behind the product). Trust must ultimately reach and deliver to what our customer wants. Customer-led value chains knew their customer profile intimately.

Taste was talked about a lot. “People buy with their eyes. Marketing will get you the first sale, but taste will ensure you get the repeat customer.” We put this to the test with Zespri SunGold, Rockit apples, Rose veal and a soon-to-be released craft beer.

Other observations were that while NZ’s seasonality plays to our farmer/grower strengths, on the flipside it has the potential to erode value with uncontrolled volumes and inconsistency of product.

Capitalisation of some value chains is needed to manage future planned volume increases, and to fund innovation and technology advancement – in a capital constrained environment, where will this come from, and how will it be prioritised?

Every value chain required more highly skilled and trainable people. Those with seasonal staff celebrated and individualised them, which is not often highlighted when politicised. Our education system needs to be geared to advance our primary sector, yet some tertiaries are reducing their focus on ag/hort, science and food…

Much “thought for food” and “food for thought”…!

Thank you to all who generously hosted our tour group and to Nuffield NZ for giving me a thought provoking and inspiring opportunity.

Follow Jesamine Wanoa on LinkedIn here.

Follow Rachel Baker on LinkedIn here.

Register your interest in the next Value Chain Innovation Programme here.

The 50th Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme graduates.

With Alumni now numbering 1075, the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme has had a long and rich history of leadership capability lift across the food and fibre sector.

To celebrate the 50th cohort’s graduation, the collective impact of alumni, and the Programme’s history, the NZ Rural Leadership Trust (Rural Leaders) hosted an event at Lincoln University’s Waimarie Building.

Kate Scott, Lisa Rogers and Dr Patrick Aldwell, spoke at the event, with Dr Aldwell sharing more the Programme’s genesis.

Serial impact.

The William Keith Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) was established in 1930 as a philanthropic organisation, running alongside the Kellogg’s Breakfast Cereal Company (Kellogg’s).

William Keith Kellogg initially set up Kellogg’s to support his brother’s business – a sanitarium.

Over his lifetime (1860-1951), William donated nearly $70m in stock to the WKKF, as he put it “to help people help themselves.” He wanted to equip people with the knowledge and solutions for better health and wellbeing outcomes.

He left simple instructions to future trustees and staff, “…use the WKKF’s money to promote the health, wellbeing and happiness of children.”

Incidentally, Kellogg’s has recently been rebranded ‘Kellanova’ in New Zealand and Australia, while in North America the brand will appear as WK Kellogg and Co. on supermarket shelves.

1075 Kellogg Scholars since 1979.

Eventually, part of the WKKF’s grants were used to establish rural leadership programmes in the US, Australia, and NZ.

One bold individual, John Pryde, CE of Federated Farmers 1964-1975 and Lincoln University Senior Fellow 1975-1991, persistently tried to set up a Rural Leadership Programme, finally succeeding in 1979 with funding from the WKKF for the first five years for a programme.

Since 1979 the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme has helped deepen leadership capability in industries across our sector – and since 2017 it has been delivered by the New Zealand Rural Leadership Trust (Rural Leaders).

Thanks to the additional support of Rural Leaders’ investing partners, New Zealand Food and Fibre has more capable, and purpose driven people. 1075 of these individuals are Kellogg alumni.

Celebrating the Kellogg Programme’s impact.

As the Mackenzie Study has shown, the impact Kellogg alumni have made, and continue to make, cannot be underestimated. In fact, we thought it was something well worth celebrating. And so we did.

About 80 alumni, investing partners and industry leaders came together on Thursday 30 November to celebrate not only the 50^th Kellogg cohort’s graduation, but also the rich history of the Programme and the collective impact of Kellogg alumni.

Kate Scott, NZ Rural Leadership Trust Chair, opened by defining the the two types of future leaders Ta Tipene O’Regan believed we would see, “…

“Future takers who accept the future for what it is, feeling powerless to change what will be, and allowing today’s realities to obscure tomorrow’s potential, ready to respond to change; and future makers who shape the future by reading the signs, determined to create future spaces for people to excel, undaunted by today’s problems, and ready to lead change.”

Kate Scott drew on the powerful demonstration of achievement and impact catalogued by the Mackenzie Study and closed her speech by challenging the graduates gathered to become future leaders, “…ask yourself; how will I unleash the potential in others so that we can grow rural leaders together?”

Dr Patrick Aldwell, who has a long history of involvement with Kellogg spoke passionately of the Programme’s history, especially of William K Kellogg’s desire to ‘help people help themselves’. “May you have the skills, confidence, awareness and networks to take the next step, no matter what that may be. I congratulate you on your Kellogg achievements…”, Dr Aldwell said in closing.

Lisa Rogers, Rural Leaders CEO, gave a note of thanks to partners, the board and industry before leading the awarding of the certificates for the 50th Kellogg cohort.

Pictured below – the alumni list.

Four 2024 Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholarships awarded.

Four food and fibre sector leaders have been awarded 2024 Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholarships.

The Nuffield Awards Ceremony was hosted by Minister O’Connor and the New Zealand Rural Leadership Trust (Rural Leaders) at the Grand Hall in Parliament, Wellington last night.

Growing interest in the Nuffield Scholarships.

With the number of scholarship applicants rising each year, competition has been strong.

To ensure the 2024 Nuffield Scholars can travel and gain international insights in a climate of rising travel costs, the value of the Scholarships increased in 2023. This has also meant that four scholars were selected this year instead of the maximum five, making competition for scholarships tougher still.

Each scholar brings an impressive track record of performance and a corresponding level of passion. The scholars will now need to apply this experience and passion to finding those insights that will benefit the food and fibre sector.

“The four scholars represent up to eight industries, four separate regions, and over fifty years’ food and fibre experience.

This cohort’s combined knowledge and skill range will enable them to hit the ground running and support each other. The group’s first scholarship component is the Value Chain Innovation Programme – which starts next week.

We are as interested and excited to see each scholar’s impact on community, industry, and the sector, as we are the collective impact of the cohort”, Said Lisa Rogers, CEO, New Zealand Rural Leadership Trust (Rural Leaders).

The 2024 Nuffield Scholars.

The new 2024 Nuffield Scholars were announced by Kate Scott, Chair, NZ Rural Leadership Trust as:

Carlos Bagrie – An Otago based Sheep and Beef/Arable Farmer. Carlos will focus his research on circular farming systems that reduce waste while improving the bottom line.

Rachel Baker
Rachel is a Central Hawke’s Bay based Agri-investments Portfolio Manager, and Dairy Farmer. Rachel’s research will look at the impact of existing and proposed global food strategies on food producers.

Jenna Smith
A Waikato based Māori Agribusiness CEO, and Dairy Farmer. Jenna’s research will focus on climate change related land use changes.

Peter Templeton
A Southland based fifth generation Dairy Farmer. Peter’s research interest is in the future of farming and the role of innovation.

Leadership and change in food and fibre.

Before the Scholar announcements, Kate Scott, Chair, New Zealand Rural Leadership Trust, spoke about a global and national context of relentless change, saying that the challenges our sector faces within this require high-performing leaders for the teams they serve.

To this end the New Zealand Rural leadership Trust was commissioned by Food and Fibre Centre for Vocational Excellence in September 2022, to research and design a leadership development ecosystem for Aotearoa New Zealand’s food and fibre sector. Kate Scott drew on some of the work in the two project reports completed so far.

“Our leaders need to be more adaptive than ever before, creating healthy and diverse, high-performing environments that allow teams to acquire the skills and to build the resilience they need to thrive in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world”, Said Kate Scott.

The first report presents research into the current state of leader development in the food and fibre sector.

The second report, ‘A Principles-centred Leadership Model’, proposes that Leaders who truly lead unleash their potential and that of those around them.

Kate Scott further acknowledged the support of Rural Leaders’ Partners, including that of Strategic Partners, AGMARDT, DairyNZ, Beef+LambNZ, Mackenzie Charitable Foundation, and FMG, and Programme Partners, MPI, Farmlands Co-operative, FAR, Horticulture NZ, Zespri, LIC and Rabobank.

Nuffield Scholar Research.

The 2023 Nuffield Scholars’ research topics will address several of our biggest food and fibre challenges and opportunities. They will bring a valuable global perspective to these with insights gleaned from an intensive travel itinerary of visits, meetings and experiences, designed to lead to a period of transformative personal growth.

The four new Scholars will join the over 180 Nuffield Alumni, awarded scholarships over the last 73 years.

Jessie Chan – Impact Story

Jessie Chan, MNZM – 2012 Kellogg Scholar.

Among her many accolades, Jessie became a member of the NZ Order of Merit for services to dairy and agriculture in 2022. Jessie was the recipient of Canterbury’s Institute of Directors aspiring director award in 2014 and was Fonterra Dairy Woman of the Year in 2017.

A respected leader in the dairy industry, Jessie is a director on boards including, NZ Pork, AgResearch, and AgriZero, and has served in the past on boards such as Ngai Tahu Farming, RuralCo and Alpine Energy.

Always interested in science, Jessie’s first role at the age of 17, was in Palmerston North’s Fonterra research lab, where she was exposed to product development.

University came soon after with study toward an animal science degree – graduating with honours.

After four years study Jessie went to Wellington where she held various primary sector roles, eventually heading a Federated Farmers’ policy team.

Marrying and moving to Canterbury, Jessie, and her then husband, took a share-milking job just south of the Rakaia River. Eventually they took over the lease and grew their herd from 750 to 1700 cows.

Jessie is now an equity partner with friends in her own dairy farm at Springston in Canterbury, an arrangement that works in well with her directorships.

Having held many senior sector leadership roles and understanding well the hard work required on the path to farm ownership, Jessie believes farming must adapt to meet challenges like environmental and climate change.

Jessie believes many of the answers will come from science, and to this end serves on the board of AgResearch and AgriZero. AgriZero support science-based solutions to some of the sector’s, and the world’s, trickiest challenges.

AgriZero is world-first partnership between agribusiness and the government and aims to reduce agricultural emissions 30% by 2030. A recent investment by AgriZero has been to build more methane chambers where a product’s effectiveness in reducing a cows’ methane output can be measured.

Jessie continues to apply science and entrepreneurship to Primary Sector challenges – along with her own enthusiasm, a lead-by-example style, and a long-held passion for science, for her industry and for the sector.

Jessie takes this quote she made in a recent Farmers Weekly article, “Let’s keep combining that science piece with that entrepreneur piece that goes, actually we can take that science and apply it on – farm this way and get a really good outcome’, I think we all want to move forward and do better for the land.”

We look forward to seeing the positive impact Jessie has made continue to influence change in dairy and the food and fibre sector.

Corrigan Sowman – Impact Story

Corrigan Sowman – 2016 Kellogg Scholar, 2019 Nuffield Scholar.

Corrigan is the owner, director, and business manager of the 400ha Uruwhenua Farms in Golden Bay, a family-owned dairy unit where technology is used to manage a large herd in a small herd way – especially in terms of attention to individual animals. He is a graduate of Massey University and has a Bachelor of Applied Science.

Corrigan is both a Nuffield and Kellogg Scholar who completed his Nuffield research on how to better understand the way pressure on farmers impacts decision making.

His Kellogg research looked at the critical success factors of an agriculture non-profit in knowledge creation and dissemination.

Corrigan is LIC Chair, succeeding fellow Nuffield Scholar Murray King, who says of Corrigan’s appointment, “He has a deep understanding of farming, its challenges and what farmers need both now and in the future in order to be more profitable and sustainable.”

He is a member of the Fonterra Sustainability Advisory Panel, a group providing independent advice to the Fonterra Senior Management Team and Board. He has been a former Consulting Officer with DairyNZ and a Farm Consultant with FarmRight, in Canterbury.

In the past Corrigan has been Chair and Independent Director of the South Island Dairy Development Centre (SIDDC), which operates the Lincoln University Dairy Farm. He has also been Deputy Chair of the DairyNZ Dairy Environmental Leaders Forum, an initiative fostering environmental stewardship and community leadership amongst New Zealand dairy farmers.

We look forward to seeing Corrigan continue to support work encouraging farm practices that strengthen the integrity of the food we produce.

Dr Alison Stewart – FAR and the role of arable systems in agriculture.

In this podcast, Dr Alison Stewart, CEO at the Foundation for Arable Research, talks with Farmers Weekly’s Managing Editor, Bryan Gibson, about the role of arable in agriculture, her role at FAR and the delivery of research that benefits growers.

Dr Stewart also discusses her involvement with the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme and the importance of exposure to diversity of thought for leaders in Food and Fibre.

Listen to Alison’s podcast or read the transcript below.

Bryan Gibson – Managing Editor of Farmer’s Weekly.

My name is Bryan Gibson, Managing Editor of Farmers Weekly and this week I am talking to Dr Alison Stewart, CEO at FAR, the Foundation for Arable Research, and a regular speaker on the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme.

Bryan Gibson:
G’day Alison. How’s it going?

Dr Alison Stewart – Chief Executive Officer at the Foundation for Arable Research (FAR).
Yeah, great. Thanks for having me.

BG: Great to have you here. Now, you’re the Chief Executive of Far. What’s been happening in your world lately?

The current arable context.

AS: Well, we’ve just had a referendum. So, every six years, our levy peers vote to decide whether FAR is doing a good job and they want to continue paying their levy. So that happened just last month. I guess for the last year, we have been focused a little bit on the referendum and making sure that the growers know what we’re doing and what value it delivers. And fortunately, yes, we got good support.

Although I have to say getting growers to vote was the biggest challenge. They’ve just got so much happening in their lives at the moment and so much information being thrown at them that they’re almost in a situation where finding the time to vote in a referendum was not a high priority. That actually was the biggest challenge, convincing them to get onto their computer and vote.

BG: And running the organisation, what does your job entail? What do you do in a week?

AS: My job is to make sure that everybody else in the company is doing their job really well. I’m joining all the dots. We’ve got some amazing research staff who are out there doing applied research, trying to find new management systems, new tools, new technologies that will assist our farmers.

We also have a lot of extension people focused on trying to support them with all of the compliance regulations that are coming down the track. And then we also have to deal with the biosecurity incursions. We’re dealing with two at the moment.

Amongst all of that, we’re just trying to promote to the general public, to the other sectors, to the government, the value of arable systems and the value that they bring to New Zealand agriculture. I jump around a lot, getting involved in lots of things, across lots of areas, at different levels of responsibility. It’s never a dull day.

BG: Yeah. Our Food and Fibre Sector is dominated by the big two animal proteins. I guess, as you say, the animal sector is as big and successful of its own accord, but in some ways plays second or third fiddle sometimes?

AS: Oh, very much so. That frustrates me in the sense that we actually underpin the livestock sector because we produce all of the seed and the grass seed that they need to grow their pastures to feed their cows. If we go under, then the livestock sector is going to be substantially worse off.

We also produce a large amount of the animal feed the dairy sector and the beef sector and the poultry sector need. So, I’m not sure that we ever get full recognition for the important role we play, not only in our own right through producing milling wheat and quality seed crops, but also underpinning the livestock sector. I try to remind my colleagues in the dairy and beef and sheep sector that they need us as much as we need them.

World-leading seed production.

BG: I guess a lot of people do just think of fields of maize or barley or wheat, but that seed production part of things is really important, but also quite an opportunity and a success for New Zealand, isn’t it? We’re quite good at it.

AS: Absolutely. It does help that the big global seed companies can see that they can get out of Northern Hemisphere seasons and they can get seed crops being produced in New Zealand. We have really good environmental conditions.

We have good quality certification, verification and accountability systems. We’re seen to be a very important seed producer. That’s really good from the perspective of an arable farmer because it provides a really nice rotation.

We’ve got our foundational cereal crops, but then we’ve got the seed crops in the foundation of the rotation and that gives a nice diversity, but it also introduces the opportunity to capture another revenue source.

Dr Alison Stewart - A CEO’s career path.

BG: Now, how did you get to the position you’re in now? What’s your career been like? What did you do when you left school?

AS: Well, I mean, gosh, I’ve been around the block. I’ve always been interested in plants. Even as a child, I was always out in the garden with my mum planting and looking after plants. I did botany at university, and then I did a PhD in plant pathology, and then I came to New Zealand.

Obviously, I’m Scottish, and I came to New Zealand, got a lecturing job at Auckland University, and it was the old Botany department. That was how I started off my career being an academic, and I had 10 years at Auckland. Then I moved down to Lincoln University because I wanted to be doing more applied research and more closer to the actual farming sector. I was 18 years at Lincoln University as an academic, running a big research centre, looking at sustainable production systems.

Then I decided to challenge myself a little bit more and I went off to California and ran a biotech company. Then I came back to New Zealand and headed up forestry science in Rotorua with Scion. Then I moved from there and came to be the CEO of FAR.

I’m probably relatively unusual in the sense that I’ve been in academia, I’ve been in the CRI system, I’ve been in a commercial company and I’m now working in an industry body. I’ve worked across horticulture, vegetable cropping, herbal cropping, and forestry. So it gives me a nice broad perspective on what’s happening, particularly in the plant-based sectors in New Zealand.

FAR - delivering the arable research that benefits growers.

BG: Well, that’s quite a CV. I’m interested in your interest in applied science and knowledge transfer. That’s something that’s been talked about in our sector as something that works pretty well, but does need work, if you know what I mean. Is that something that you think is moving the dial over the years?

AS: Oh, most certainly. I mean, there isn’t much point in doing research if you’re not going to get the results of the research out, being taken up and used by farmers and growers. FAR in particular, over the last 25 years, has been an exemplar of an organisation that has effectively delivered its research to benefit the growers.

It’s becoming more difficult because the environment is so much more challenging for growers. I won’t say the good old days, because I never think that the old days are actually that good. But in the past, FAR would do research and it would be identifying a new plant growth regulator or a new fungicide or a better fertiliser programme. And you’d go out and you’d say, if you do X, Y and Z, that will deliver a one-ton increase in yield.

That’s a really easy story to tell. The growers will go, that’s a good idea. I’ll do that. The growers get a one-ton increase and they think, Oh, my levy is good value for money for us doing a good job. But we’ve driven yield optimisation pretty close to the optimum.

A challenging arable environment.

Now the challenge is, how do we maintain those optimum yields given all of the constraints that growers now have around input costs and compliance around fresh water and climate change. That’s a much, much harder knowledge exchange programme because you’re potentially, and quite often, telling the growers something that they don’t want to hear. So you’re always trying to find a way in which you can present that information in as positive a way as possible.

At this moment in time in New Zealand, farmers feel as if they’re really under the pump with people throwing compliance regulations at them, their cost of production is going up. So often their headspace is not necessarily that favourably inclined towards hearing some quite difficult messaging. It’s challenging. It’s a really challenging space for the growers, and it’s a really challenging space for the labour organisations.

FAR and the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme.

BG: Very much so. Now, turning to Rural Leaders, you have a bit to do with the Kellogg Programme, is that correct?

AS: Yeah. I mean, they roll me out twice a year where I come and I talk to the new cohort of rural leaders. I’m one of these people that, and it causes me a lot of angst over the years, I tend to just say exactly what I think. That can get me into a lot of trouble!

I really enjoy challenging young people around what they’re thinking, why they’re thinking it, and what they want to achieve in their careers. I love having discussions around what leadership actually means, because leadership means quite different things to different people.

In New Zealand agriculture at this moment in time, with all of the challenges that are coming up, it’s really hard to be a leader because levy organisations, for example, are reliant on doing what their levy peers want them to do, and that sometimes prevents you from being able to take a true leadership position.

I really like talking about some of those challenges, and it’s a good environment because it’s not out in the public arena. You’re not going to get hung out to dry on social media, but you’re able to have some really honest and sometimes quite painful discussions about how New Zealand agriculture needs to move into the future and the changes that need to be made. And that young cohort of Kellogg leaders are up for those kinds of discussions, and I just love it.

BG: I mean, it’s an interesting group because most of them already have a career and then they have a day job, and then Kellogg is back to school. So I guess it’s different from your previous work in academia, where it was 9:00 to 5:00 learning. And that has some upside, I think, of the Kellogg Programme, do you think?

Kellogg exposes leaders to diversity of thought and opinion.

AS: I think it’s a fantastic programme because it provides an opportunity to bring multiple thought processes to the table. Scott Champion, who’s one of the key Facilitators on the Programme; he’s very well connected and he can bring quite disparate views to the discussion.

That’s really important because if you stay in your own industry, in your own space, in your silo, then all that happens is that everybody validates preconceived ideas and it’s really good to be challenged.

I think that’s what the Kellogg Leadership Programme does. It makes you realise that what you thought you knew and what you thought was a valid belief, there may actually be alternative viewpoints. You have to open your mind to different ways of thinking and different people’s perceptions of agriculture and different conclusions that you can draw from the vast amount of research that’s out there.

It’s a fantastic learning opportunity for young people to avoid getting into a siloed mantra of just believing the here and now and what people they tend to engage with think. It’s a bit like when you google something, the algorithm sitting in behind Google can work out what your preconceived ideas are, and therefore they tend to give you links to things that validate those preconceived ideas.

I think we’ve always got to try and make sure that we don’t get into that mentality of thinking that because we believe something now, that means it must be true.

BG: Cross-discipline research or work in real time, isn’t it?

AS: Absolutely, yeah.

BG: So, you’d recommend the Programme to anyone thinking about the big issues facing the sector, and thinking about leadership?

AS: I think you have to be prepared to put time and effort into it. It’s like anything in life that if you don’t commit and put your passion and energy into it, you’re not going to get the same amount of benefit out of it. I think you have to be prepared to come to the table and listen to those diverse views and be prepared to change your opinion about things.

If you come to the Kellogg Programme with a preconceived idea that you’re right and everyone else is wrong, you’re not going to get the benefit out of the Programme.

BG: Thanks for listening to Ideas that Grow, a Rural Leaders podcast in partnership with Massey and Lincoln Universities, AGMARDT and Food HQ. This podcast was presented by Farmers Weekly.

For more information on Rural Leaders, the Nuffield New Zealand Farming Scholarships, the Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme, or the Value Chain Innovation Programme, please visit ruralleaders.co.nz

The Kellogg Rural Leadership Programme has been developing leaders for the rural and agri-food sector since 1979.

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